Are Your Staff Prepared for a Flat World?

Let’s face it. The quality of your workforce development services depends primarily on the quality of your staff and your organizational culture. To provide effective leadership and service in a global economy, staff are called upon to develop completely new skill sets and core competencies in areas outside of traditional program administration. If your approach to staff development is simply making sure that staff are trained in how to use your computer data base, then you're probably not getting the kind of support and performance you need to be competitive in the 21st century.

To evaluate how well-prepared your staff may be for working with business and job seeker customers in a global economy, answer yes or no to the following questions.  Then review our section on staff skill development and capacity building to see how we might be able to assist you.

When you finish, you may also wish to take our Self Assessments for Boards and for One-Stop Systems.

Does Your Staff Have the Skills It Needs to Support Business Customers in a Global Economy?

  1. Does your staff understand the ways in which businesses operate in a global economy and how these new business practices impact workforce needs, the workplace and business services?
  2. Can it effectively market One-Stop services to businesses?
  3. Can it effectively asses job seeker skills and backgrounds in order to make the appropriate referrals to businesses? (If your business customers are complaining about the lack of qualified candidates, then the answer may be "no.")

Does Your Staff Have the Skills to Effectively Support Job Seekers? Office_team_1

  1. Does staff understand the three different kinds of jobs in a global economy (fungible, anchored and value-add) and how these job types change the ways we advise job seekers?
  2. Is it able to use a variety of career assessment tools (not just the TABE) to assist all customers in making effective career decisions and developing appropriate plans?
  3. Is it able to adequately use labor market information to advise customers on career options?
  4. Does staff know how to facilitate customers in the development of effective, actionable career plans that prepare them for long-term career success and self-sufficiency?
  5. Can it effectively use technology tools to help customers explore options and develop and implement a career plan? Does it know the major career resources that are available online and can they assist customers in using those resources effectively?

If your staff doesn't have these skills, you may want to learn more about how the Widing Group can help by visiting our Staff Capacity and Training section.